


No Solace in Truth

by karapalamas



Series: into the light of the dark black night [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 16:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3902962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karapalamas/pseuds/karapalamas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>after s.h.i.e.l.d. finds a way to restore her memories, kara has to confront some unsettling details about her past with grant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She woke up in a hospital bed at the Playground, head pounding and eyes blurry.

It took her a moment to remember where she was, the sound of an EKG machine’s steady beeping became nothing more than background noise once she did. S.H.I.E.L.D. had finally found a way to give her what she wanted more than anything in the world.

To be whole again.

Not in some metaphorical sense, but in the actual sense. They’d found a way to give her back the pieces of herself that Whitehall had taken away. Coulson had kept mum about the whole thing, informing her she didn’t have the clearance level to know what the procedure entailed. In any other circumstance she’d have told him to take his mystery operation and fuck off, but she was so desperate that she was willing to trust someone who’d given her no reason to have faith in him, if it meant she might get to be herself again.

The memories didn’t come back in a flood. Slowly, over the course of the next few hours, they started to fall back into place. Simmons had been in a few times to check her vitals and do a brain scan, Bobbi had stopped by with candy to “aid in the recovery process”. In between all that, Kara took the time to do something she hadn’t been able to in quite a while, and that was reminisce.

About her vacation in Bali two years ago.

The first time she flew a quinjet.

Her days at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.

But as she dug, she unearthed things she hadn’t expected to find. Memories involving the one thing she could depend on, the one thing she was so sure of in the wake of Hydra’s assault on her. Grant Ward.

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. Like the world as she knew it had crumbled beneath her feet.

* * *

Grant was a tough man to find, but she knew him his habits. The key to finding someone who didn’t want to be found was getting inside their head, and Kara knew his well.

(Maybe not as well as you think.)

He was still in the states, making a temporary home out of a motel in Fort Lauderdale. It was a good strategy, anyone looking for him would have assumed he high-tailed it out of the country the first chance he got. She had no idea what brought him to Flordia, but she doubted it was his first stop and assumed it wouldn’t be his last.

The deadbolt on the door didn’t keep her out, prying open the front window was almost too easy. She looked around the room, and for a moment thought back to their house in Tijuana. Not because this place held any similarities to their home - the opposite, actually. The motel was empty, aside from a dufflebag at the foot on the bed and a few articles of clothing thrown about. Their house in Tijuana was full, from succulents and cacti, to the imitation painting of dogs playing poker that Grant had insisted on hanging in their living room.

The thought of it, once warm and comforting, had soured.

Waiting was supposed to drag on, but she hardly noticed time pass as she sat on the edge of the bed, the warm metal of the gun resting against her palm. She was lost in her thoughts, ones of him, and them, and everything that had happened since she found him - bullets in his torso and bleeding out of the floor of a Hydra base. Until she heard the sound of keys twist in the locks and sprang to her feet, cocking the hammer of her gun as the door pushed open. The look on Grant’s face was visibly shocked.

“Kara?”

“Close the door, Grant.”

Eyes never once leaving her own, he did as she instructed. “What are you doing?”

“No, you don’t talk. Not until I tell you to.” Her words were all vitriol and venom, her finger poised on the trigger and barrel aimed at his heart. “S.H.I.E.L.D. did what you hoped they’d do. They fixed me, literally. I have my memories back. All of them. I remember Poland, our first mission together. My first mission ever. I remember eight years of friendship, of trusting you.” Using anger, she tried to mask the pain that she felt, and still her eyes began to sting. “I remember finding out that you were working for Hydra. Bakshi dragging me out of my safe house. And of all the things I’d forgotten, what it felt like when Whitehall brainwashed and tortured me wasn’t one of them.”

Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and when she spoke again, her voice cracked. “Did you know what they were going to do to me?”

“Of course not.” He answered quickly, the look on his face as lost and upset as the one on her own. “I wouldn’t let that happen to you.”

“I don’t believe you. You lied to me. All you do is lie. You had all these memories of me, and I had nothing, and you kept them to yourself. You’re a traitor, you worked for the people who destroyed me.” Pausing, she let her eyes roam his face, looking for a trace of the man she always thought she knew. “Was any of it ever real?”

He took a step towards her but she took a step back, moving the gun up so the barrel was pointed at his forehead. Cautiously, he held up his hands. “It was always real. I’ll do whatever I can to prove that to you.”

For a moment, she wanted to believe him. She loved him. She couldn’t tell him, but she remembered that too. For a moment, she wanted to forgive him.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The bullet left a hole where it hit wall. Grant stared up at her, horrified, as she lowered her shaky hands. Quickly holstering her weapon, she pushed him out of her way and bolted out the door, holding back the sobs that threatened to tear through her chest.


	2. Chapter 2

Kara was a good person, one who felt guilty when she did bad things. And she’d done her fair share of bad things.

Collateral damage wasn’t a foreign concept to her. Missions go wrong and people get caught in the crossfire, but as long as the objective’s are met everyone is expendable. That’s the part of S.H.I.E.L.D. no one wants to talk about, it’s what they indoctrinate you with at the academy until you’re so far into it that you have no choice but to believe them.

Once upon a time, Kara thought she could save everyone. Then she realized that sometimes trying to does more harm than good.

When it came to Grant, her own ideologies were at war. Everyone told her what a monster he was, that she was foolish for believing that he could ever be anything more. Maybe they were right, and she was holding on to the idea of a person who didn’t exist. The thing was, even though he’d lied to her, even though he’d been lying to her since the moment she met him, Kara still felt like she knew him. All the time she’d spent with him, every intimate moment and private conversation, couldn’t just be part of some rouse. She refused to believe that.

So she felt guilty, because Kara believed in forgiveness. It had taken her a long time to forgive herself for all the bad things she’d done during her career as a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, but once she did, she realized it was surprisingly easy to forgive others. Yet she’d still pointed that gun at Ward’s head. Shooting him, for just a moment, had seemed like a better alternative than forgiving him.

Now she found herself standing outside the door of his motel. This time, she left the gun behind. Instead of sneaking in the window, she balled her hand into a fist and knocked a couple times against the door. She wasn’t even sure if she expected him to answer, for all she knew he could have taken off again. Maybe this time he’d left the country, maybe she wouldn’t be able to find him again. The last memory they had of each other being one where she shot a bullet into the wall near his head didn’t settle well with her.

Luckily he answered the door, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly, something that admittedly caught her off guard. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

It was hard to look him in the eyes. “Can I come in?”

He stepped aside and she walked in past him, turning around as he closed the door. Silence came and lingered. Kara looked over at the wall, a patch of discolored plaster covering the hole she’d left behind.

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

When he moved closer to her, she didn’t step away. His hands rested lightly against her upper arms and he looked down at her with a sincerity that was hard to doubt. “I wanted you to figure out who you were on your own. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to live up to some memory.”

She nodded her head slowly. It made sense. That didn’t change the fact that she was angry that he’d done it. Keeping that information from her was wrong, regardless of how he justified it. But she wasn’t trying to figure out whether what he did was right or wrong. All she wanted was to understand.

Part of her felt as though she should ask him about Hydra, but what could he tell her that she didn’t already know? What he’d done wasn’t exactly news to her. The betrayal of it was something she hadn’t felt, not knowing that there was any relationship between the two of them for him to have betrayed. She’d already forgiven him for the blood he’d spilled, for the dark and dirty things he was trying to make amends for. But there’s still a sliver of doubt in her mind.

“I’m going to ask you this again, and I need you to tell me the truth because if I find out your lying-” She couldn’t finish the sentence, the weight of the words was too much for her to carry. “Did you know what they were going to do to me?”

Reaching a hand up, he absently tucked a piece of her behind her ear and broke eye contact. “When they took you, I was at the Playground.” He paused for a moment, clearing his throat. “In Vault D.” She’d heard about that, how S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept him as their prisoner. Which meant he was telling the truth when he’d said he hadn't known.

That knowledge was supposed to fill her with relief, yet it made the pit of guilt at the bottom of her stomach feel even bigger.

“I should go.” She didn’t know what else to say. She thought she could do this, but it was all still so overwhelming. Pulling away from him, Kara moved towards the door, but his hand caught hers before she made it too far.

“Or you could stay. I’ve missed you.”

Despite everything, she’d missed him too. Forgiving him was about more than just giving him a second chance, it was about telling herself it was okay to let go of that anger.

So she did.


End file.
